Now - accepting the fact that there are gaps in fossil records, they are trying to turn discussion into DNA.

This is nothing more as an evasion. They wanted by studying macromelecules prove their unfouned hypothesis about natural selection and random mutation as efficient evolutionary forces. They think they know secrets, what is behind the scene. But they remind more those technicians who studying trasmission of waves or describing details about TV screen think they know more about a broadcasted play. They think they underestand better a Shakespeare play, because they know in which frequency it is trasmitted or what is the sequence of bites representing it on CD.

It was Adolf Portman who in his inauguration speech "Von der Idee des humanen" as rector of Basel University showed that such study is only part of biological work and such study itself is unable to explain evolution.

But I am afraid that his interesting works - especially Biologie und Geist and Neue wege der Biologie - are also outdated and don't have place in the darwinian Golden library. Or better as folks here call it - it is not "primary literature".

--------------I could not answer, but should maintain my ground.-
Charles Darwin

A) what is your alternate explanation for the evolution of horses? Do you even have one?

B) do you believe common descent between apes and humans is true?

Why are you still too much of a coward to answer these questions? Did Davison tell you not to?

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

You seem to be saying that the rate of mutational change is the same for all species over time. Is that correct?

But we know that bacteria, fruit flies and mice - due to their rapid reproduction rates - will have more mutational changes over time than animals with slower reproduction rates.

Well, it could be true, but there are many factors to take into account, whether we have sexual reproduction or not, for instance.Also, if you want to make a comparison between bacteria and multicellular organisms, you need to compare mutation rates per replication, not per generations. There are several cell replications separating the egg cell from the gametes in animals and plants, though I agree, that replication time is usually shorter in prokaryotes. But more importantly, in absolute time, the relation between substitutions (=fixed mutations) rates and mutation rates (negatively correlated with generation time) is true for neutral sites. Phylogenies involving very distant taxa such as eukaryotes and bacteria are built for genes under very strong selection, namely genes coding for rRNAs. These are unlikely do evolve by genetic drift, so we don't really expect their substitution rates to depend on generation time, but on other external factors, which may reflect absolute time. I shall add the the molecular clock is not always the rule, especially between very distant lineages. But modern phylogenetic methods don't strictly rely on it.

And lastly, even if you remark is valid, it contradicts Denton's view.

So we're still waiting for you to demonstrate how the fossil record disprove the current theory of evolution. I showed it was quite the contrary. What is your response to my objection?

I'd guess that the fossil record would be a major part of the case for the theory of natural selection if it wasn't so ambiguous in its support of it.

Oh aye? Just what are these ambiguities you think are so important? Does this bring you back to the horse evolution that prompted you to come here? Or are you thinking of the old creationist stand-byes, the Cambrian explosion, dinosaur fossils with soft tissue, no intermediate fossils and no fossils with half a fin or half a wing?

Coming back to the nested hierarchies that you seem to persist in misunderstanding; you write

Quote

You will also never find a CD player with a microwave oven in it, or a dresser with a 357 chevy motor

But you could find exactly the same electronic chip in a truck, a ship, a railway locomotive, an elevator, a sewing machine and a cash register. On the other hand, not one of the 'ancestors' of these machines would have the same kind of electronic chip, or even anything electrical.

This situation never arises in biology. Whenever organisms share a particular feature you will find that this group of organisms also has other features that are absent in others, or the feature serves the same purpose in each organism but is structurally different (e.g. wings, eyes).

In another post you suggest the same effect could have arisen if there were multiple designers. True. I have often thought it looks as though one god started it off then farmed it out to other gods, who in turn subcontracted to lesser gods - a sort of pyramid scheme of gods ('Here, I've got mammals started off. Now you take a few off to Australia and we'll see how you do. Don't muck around with the basics and no sneaking a look at what gods are doing anywhere else'). How many gods are you suggesting?

All the super-specialized breeds would probably also eventually go away - as their gene pool became more and more watered down through breeding as well.

The gene pool would be enriched. Domesticated dogs have high homozygosity from inbreeding, not low.

Yes, but most dogs breeds are too domesticated to survive in the wild. Surely many have lost the ability to hunt, others will have lost the ability to defend themselves against predators. Reintroducing them to the wild would probably result in an immediate knockout of many of these breeds - thereby removing much of that enrichment from the gene pool.Natural selection is a cold mistress. It works by killing.As Schindewolf said, "Selection is only a negative principle, an eliminator, and as such is trivial." (pg. 360)

--------------"If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance." Orville Wright

"The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question." Richard Dawkins

All the super-specialized breeds would probably also eventually go away - as their gene pool became more and more watered down through breeding as well.

The gene pool would be enriched. Domesticated dogs have high homozygosity from inbreeding, not low.

Yes, but most dogs breeds are too domesticated to survive in the wild. Surely many have lost the ability to hunt, others will have lost the ability to defend themselves against predators. Reintroducing them to the wild would probably result in an immediate knockout of many of these breeds - thereby removing much of that enrichment from the gene pool.Natural selection is a cold mistress. It works by killing.As Schindewolf said, "Selection is only a negative principle, an eliminator, and as such is trivial." (pg. 360)

Have you been to the western world lately? There's not many predators that could take on a sausage dog anymore. And there are also cities full of feral cats (descended no doubt from domesticated stock).

And my Siamese cat, bred to the point of insanity, would have no trouble surviving in the wild

"it moved, I caught it, I tried to eat it, Rinse, repeat"

--------------I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies".FTK

if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot standGordon Mullings

If you recall, this thread was originally intended for you to show how the evolution of the horse is a problem for the current theory of evolution. I have not seen a great deal of evidence from you, yet.

You're right.

In order to keep this thread on topic, I will try to keep my posts focused on the work of Schindewolf and Berg and (at least in the case of Schindewolf) also on the evolution of the horse.

Berg doesn't say a lot about horses other than this from section IV, "Convergence":

Quote

"At the very time when in North America the Equidae were being evolved, forms of the order Litopterna were being elaborated in South America in the plains of the Argentine. The latter are extinct ungulates, in many respects recalling horses: they had also lost the lateral digits of their limbs, and for progression made use of the median digit; their extremities and neck were likewise lengthened, and in the former, the ball-and-socket joints, by which movements in all directions could be accomplished, were being gradually supplanted by pulley joints, which restricted their limbs to being moved only backwards and forwards; their teeth lengthened and grew more complex (although no cement was present). This group was extinct in South America before the arrival of horses. The Litopterna, or pseudo-horses, thus copied the horses in many ways.The same course (as to limbs and teeth) as in horses was followed in the evolution of camels in the New World, and of deer, antelopes, sheep and oxen in the Old"

Nomogenesis, pg. 212.

As for Schindewolf's position, why don't I just start by using the same quote I provided for you over at Brainstorms:

Quote

To this extent,the one toed horse must be regarded as the ideal running animal of the plains. It's early Tertiary ancestors had four digits on the front feet and three on the hind feet, and low crowned cheek teeth. Since in the later Tertiary, an expansion of plains at the expense of forests has been observed, this change in environmental conditions and the consequent change in the mode of life has been represented as the cause of linear, progressive selection leading up to the modern horse.However, in the formulation of this view, not enough consideration has been given to the fact that the evolutionary trend of reduction in the number of toes had already been introduced long before the plains were occupied in the early Tertiary by the precursors of the horse; these inhabited dense scrub, meaning that they lived in an environment where the reduction of the primitive five-toed protoungulate foot was not an advantage at all. In the descendants, then, the rest of the lateral toes degenerated and the teeth grew longer step by step... regardless of the mode of life, which... fluctuated repeatedly, with habitats switching around among forests, savannas, shrubby plains, tundra, and so on.If selection alone were decisive in this specialization trend, we would have to ascribe to it a completely incomprehensible purposefulness...

Basic Questions in Paleontology pp. 358-359, (emphasis his)

Both of these men intently studied real examples from nature and the fossil record and came to the same conclusions: 1. That evolution of types happened suddenly - not gradually.2. That subsequent evolution proceeded as if constrained by laws.3. That natural selection had nothing to do with the formation of any organ.

--------------"If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance." Orville Wright

"The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question." Richard Dawkins

Coming back to the nested hierarchies that you seem to persist in misunderstanding; you write

Quote

You will also never find a CD player with a microwave oven in it, or a dresser with a 357 chevy motor

But you could find exactly the same electronic chip in a truck, a ship, a railway locomotive, an elevator, a sewing machine and a cash register. On the other hand, not one of the 'ancestors' of these machines would have the same kind of electronic chip, or even anything electrical.

That's demonstrably not true. In electric circuits, the precursors to IC chips were soldered transistor circuit boards, the precursors to those were hand-wired transistor circuit boards, the precursors to those were relay logic and tube circuits, the precursors to those were manually switched electric circuits. So the ancestors to a modern elevator controlled with IC chips would be an elevator controlled with soldered transistor circuit boards, then one with hand-wired circuit boards, then relays and tubes, then manually operated electric switches.

Quote

This situation never arises in biology. Whenever organisms share a particular feature you will find that this group of organisms also has other features that are absent in others, or the feature serves the same purpose in each organism but is structurally different (e.g. wings, eyes).

Every organism has features that are absent in others - even within the same species. That proves little to nothing. But it's the similarities in different lineages that are the most troublesome for your theory since many are structurally similar.

Berg's book is filled with examples, but I'll give you one of his brief summations:

Quote

The comparative anatomy of animals supplies a number of striking examples of a definite direction in evolution. Among vertebrates we may mention the evolution of teeth in reptiles and mammals, the gradual ossification of the vertebral column, a reduction in the number of the bones in the skull, the transformation of a two-chambered heart into a three- and four-chambered organ in connection with a corresponding complexity in the circulatory system, the evolution of the brain... the whole subject of comparative anatomy literally bristles with facts exemplifying development in a definite direction

Nomogenesis, pg.121

Quote

In another post you suggest the same effect could have arisen if there were multiple designers. True. I have often thought it looks as though one god started it off then farmed it out to other gods, who in turn subcontracted to lesser gods - a sort of pyramid scheme of gods ('Here, I've got mammals started off. Now you take a few off to Australia and we'll see how you do. Don't muck around with the basics and no sneaking a look at what gods are doing anywhere else'). How many gods are you suggesting?

You misread me. I said the nested hierarchy is evidence of a single designer - since the parts and the organisms both make for superimposable nested hierarchies - without the anomalies sometimes seen when parts are produced by multiple designers.

--------------"If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance." Orville Wright

"The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question." Richard Dawkins

Have you been to the western world lately? There's not many predators that could take on a sausage dog anymore. And there are also cities full of feral cats (descended no doubt from domesticated stock).

And my Siamese cat, bred to the point of insanity, would have no trouble surviving in the wild

I've lived in the city and the country. Your Siamese cat might survive in the wild, but judging by the number of wild barn cats that almost starved to death on our ranch (until we started feeding them), I'd say that's no guarantee.

--------------"If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance." Orville Wright

"The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question." Richard Dawkins

You misread me. I said the nested hierarchy is evidence of a single designer - since the parts and the organisms both make for superimposable nested hierarchies - without the anomalies sometimes seen when parts are produced by multiple designers.

What all this really illustrates is the emptiness of the "designer" hypothesis in a scientific context.

ANY state of affairs in nature can be reconciled with the design hypothesis. Observe nested hierarchy? "Nested hierarchy is evidence of a single designer." DON'T observe nested hierarchy? "A designer is not constrained by common descent" etc. There is NO outcome in nature that cannot be reconciled post hoc with the design hypothesis, with one designer or multiple designers, with good designers or bad designers, and so on.

It follows that patterns of descent fail to put design to any test; hence nested hierarchy isn't "evidence of a single designer" or of any other design hypothesis.

This may be contrasted with Darwin's predictions: to fail to find nested hierarchy in nature would be to falsify his model of evolution.

(Daniel: Still waiting for you to retract your patently false claim vis interest in data with no biases or preconceptions.)

--------------Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be.

"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."- David Foster Wallace

"Hereâ€™s a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down."- Barry Arrington

So what I hear you saying is that the equidistant sequence space between Cytochrome-C among the various groups is more a function of time than anything else. Is that correct?

If that is correct, then that is completely in keeping with (and in fact would be a prediction of) common descent by design.

Common descent by design would predict that there would be mathematical patterns within the evolution of sequences and that those patterns would be based on time and other internal factors rather than any outside factors - since divergence would occur according to plan - not according to chance, environment, or any other external influences.

--------------"If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance." Orville Wright

"The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question." Richard Dawkins

So what I hear you saying is that the equidistant sequence space between Cytochrome-C among the various groups is more a function of time than anything else. Is that correct?

If that is correct, then that is completely in keeping with (and in fact would be a prediction of) common descent by design.

Common descent by design would predict that there would be mathematical patterns within the evolution of sequences and that those patterns would be based on time and other internal factors rather than any outside factors - since divergence would occur according to plan - not according to chance, environment, or any other external influences.

Is there anything that design predicts that evolution does not?

Seems as everything evolution can do, the designer(s) can also do. So your position is essentially meaningless unless you can somehow differentiate the two.

Is there a differentiation somewhere between the two things?

Are there any predictions of design that are not retrospective? I.E make a prediction for a something that's currently unknown that can be tested and the result will unambigiously say "designed" or "evolved".

If not, it seems to be all "design predictions" are worthless if they predict exactly the same things that evolution does.

Pointless.

Can you point me to a list of as yet untested "predictions" that common descent by design makes, or are they only available retrospectively? If the latter, then give up now, you'll never be able to convince anybody.

--------------I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies".FTK

if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot standGordon Mullings

And there are also cities full of feral cats (descended no doubt from domesticated stock).

OH, And the city doesn't really count as "the wild" now does it?

For whom? Certainly, it isn't the wild for humans inasmuch as it consolidates all sorts of things, like grocery stores and homes, for our convenience. But for feral cats, alas without currency to buy themselves a bag of Friskies or take out a mortgage, it is the wild. Perhaps you would like to define the characteristics of an eco-system and then explain to us how an urban environment is not one?

Never mind. After over six pages and you haven't even mentioned a horse and that is the reason you are here, no?

--------------It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)

daniel's inherent belief as humans distinct and set apart from nature is showing.

cities aren't really the wild, eh?

the edges of deserts aren't really the wild, eh?

tropical oceans aren't really the wild, eh?

a grove of paw paws aren't really the wild, eh?

daniel, natural selection shapes POPULATIONS. castle showed that selection modified populations beyond the 'regression to the type' that you seem to believe in. Other than it being a trivial mathematical exercise, you have no reason for continuing to suppose that selection is not a creative force when supplied with a panoply of diversity.

otherwise, all you are left with is 'The Designer has an inordinate fondness for beetles' and 'The designer likes wolves so much he made a marsupial knockoff model' (that is false from any systematic perspective but since you, like a five year old and VMartin, seem to be stuck on your perception of phenotypes perhaps it makes sense).

and as RBill keeps hammering, your 'design' model is consistent with ANY POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE OBSERVATION. IT SAYS NOTHING.

--------------You're obviously illiterate as hell. Peach, bro.-FtK

Finding something hard to believe based on the evidence, is science.-JoeG

However, in the formulation of this view, not enough consideration has been given to the fact that the evolutionary trend of reduction in the number of toes had already been introduced long before the plains were occupied in the early Tertiary by the precursors of the horse; these inhabited dense scrub, meaning that they lived in an environment where the reduction of the primitive five-toed protoungulate foot was not an advantage at all. In the descendants, then, the rest of the lateral toes degenerated and the teeth grew longer step by step... regardless of the mode of life, which... fluctuated repeatedly, with habitats switching around among forests, savannas, shrubby plains, tundra, and so on.If selection alone were decisive in this specialization trend, we would have to ascribe to it a completely incomprehensible purposefulness...

Basic Questions in Paleontology pp. 358-359, (emphasis his)

So basically Schindewolf is saying that horses developed single-toed hooves regardless of the selection pressures applied? How does he know what those pressures were? How does he know the scrub was dense? Paleoecologists today can identify what species were present in the landscape at a point in time, but have much more difficulty in determining vegetation structure. This has led to disagreements over what the European landscape of most of the Holocene was. Yes there were lots of oak trees present, but was it closed forest? Was it patches of scrub interspersed with grassy plains? Was it widely spaced parkland-like trees?

In other words, what was the quality of his data and how far is he spreading it with rhetoric?

All the super-specialized breeds would probably also eventually go away - as their gene pool became more and more watered down through breeding as well.

The gene pool would be enriched. Domesticated dogs have high homozygosity from inbreeding, not low.

Yes, but most dogs breeds are too domesticated to survive in the wild.

The ones that survive and reproduce (survival isn't sufficient) will tend to be the ones that are less inbred, making the "gene pool" deeper. Your arrow is in the wrong direction.

Quote

Reintroducing them to the wild would probably result in an immediate knockout of many of these breeds - thereby removing much of that enrichment from the gene pool.

The loss of the more inbred breeds would enrich the gene pool, not deplete it.

Quote

Natural selection is a cold mistress. It works by killing.

No, it works just as well be preventing reproduction. You can live to 150, but if you leave no children, your fitness is zero.

Quote

As Schindewolf said, "Selection is only a negative principle, an eliminator, and as such is trivial." (pg. 360)

You've forgotten yet again that quotes aren't evidence. Why not admit that you were lying when you claimed an interest in evidence? Look at how you've run away from discussing the massive sequence evidence that makes fossils unnecessary, after you realized that you have no hypothesis that explains the data. BTW, Schindewolf is wrong. Look at how your body normally prevents antibodies that recognize your own antigens from being produced.

So the ancestors to a modern elevator controlled with IC chips would be an elevator controlled with soldered transistor circuit boards, then one with hand-wired circuit boards, then relays and tubes, then manually operated electric switches.

But to be equivalent to a nested hierarchy it would have to have exactly the same electronic chip as it does now. So would Cugnot's steam wagon (an ancestral truck), Locomotion (an ancestral railway locomotive) and my Grandmother's treadle sewing machine. That is the only way in a nested hierarchy that the descendents could all have exactly the same feature. Not only that, but the windshield wipers found on some of these machines would only be found in machines with this specific electronic chip and no others. The windshield wipers on a car with a different chip would be structurally different, although they could look similar and perform a similar function.

--------------The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane

So what I hear you saying is that the equidistant sequence space between Cytochrome-C among the various groups is more a function of time than anything else. Is that correct?

That is incorrect. Time doesn't come into it, but a nesting based on differences. It really is quite simple in principle, which is why you should try making one. Biologists don't have to for extant life, since Linneaus did that hundreds of years ago.

I gave you a list of cars (including first and last years the model was made) to make a nested hierarchy from. Can you do so on the basis of time?

--------------"Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV

ANY state of affairs in nature can be reconciled with the design hypothesis. Observe nested hierarchy? "Nested hierarchy is evidence of a single designer." DON'T observe nested hierarchy? "A designer is not constrained by common descent" etc. There is NO outcome in nature that cannot be reconciled post hoc with the design hypothesis, with one designer or multiple designers, with good designers or bad designers, and so on.

Twenty-one minutes later:

Quote (Daniel Smith @ Sep. 28 2007,03:45)

If that is correct, then that is completely in keeping with (and in fact would be a prediction of) common descent by design.

--------------Math is just a language of reality. Its a waste of time to know it. - Robert Byers

In order to keep this thread on topic, I will try to keep my posts focused on the work of Schindewolf and Berg and (at least in the case of Schindewolf) also on the evolution of the horse.

OK. (Although it is not a hanging offence to move off topic by gradual steps. Saltational leaps of logic are a different matter. )

Quote

Berg doesn't say a lot about horses...

So, is there another example that better illustrates Berg's alternative to RM + NS?

Quote

As for Schindewolf's position, why don't I just start by using the same quote I provided for you over at Brainstorms...:

OK. The RM + NS theory claims that organisms are shaped by their environments. Where a population exists and is subject to change in that environment, selection will result in adaptive change or extinction. Adaptation is not predictive.

From your quote, Schindewolf is claiming that horses began adapting to life on the plains before arriving in that environment. If true, this would indeed be a grave problem for evolution.

How does Schindewolf establish the prevailing climate and vegetation associated with a particular fossil?

In order to keep this thread on topic, I will try to keep my posts focused on the work of Schindewolf and Berg and (at least in the case of Schindewolf) also on the evolution of the horse.

OK. (Although it is not a hanging offence to move off topic by gradual steps. Saltational leaps of logic are a different matter. :) )

Quote

Berg doesn't say a lot about horses...

So, is there another example that better illustrates Berg's alternative to RM + NS?

Quote

As for Schindewolf's position, why don't I just start by using the same quote I provided for you over at Brainstorms...:

OK. The RM + NS theory claims that organisms are shaped by their environments. Where a population exists and is subject to change in that environment, selection will result in adaptive change or extinction. Adaptation is not predictive.

From your quote, Schindewolf is claiming that horses began adapting to life on the plains before arriving in that environment. If true, this would indeed be a grave problem for evolution.

One would have to exclude the possibility of exaptation, though. And that's certainly not straightforward.